In late April, a church history lecture by Dr Lesley Rowe (Associate Fellow in History, University of Warwick) drew striking parallels with fearful plagues of the past.
The nations were gripped by fear and uncertainty; little wonder since the Black Death wiped out a third to a half of the population of Europe. In 1625, 38,000 died in London alone and the streets were eerily quiet. An eyewitness was struck by ‘the stillness of the city’. Many died ‘without the comfort of friends who dare not visit them’.
The ‘plague laws’ of Elizabethan England included social distancing. What can we learn from Christians in the 1600s who experienced God’s ‘grievous visitations’?
